1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication apparatus and more specifically to a communication apparatus preventing output of wasteful error reports.
2. Description of the Related Art
Communication apparatuses, such as facsimile machines, image-forming apparatuses, and multifunction apparatus having communication functions, have a communication function to print an error report on which the occurrence of a communication error is referred when a communication error occurs, for example, after the facsimile transmission function as the communication function is executed. A variety of communication errors occur depending on the communication function. For example, in considering the communication errors sustained by each communication function, the facsimile transmission function may sustain a communication error such as line connection failure. Such a communication error occurs when a telephone number given as the telephone number of the other party does not exist or when there is no answer a specific period of time after the communication function is launched.
The e-mail transmission function, which is another communication function, may sustain a communication error such as an e-mail message transmission failure. For example, it is assumed that a user has sent an e-mail message with image data attached to an SMTP (simple-mail transfer protocol) server. The SMTP server reads and searches the destination e-mail address. The above communication error occurs when the destination e-mail address does not exist.
The personal computer (PC) transmission function may sustain a communication error such as failure of image data transmission to a PC. Such a communication error occurs when the user transmits image data to a specific PC and the IP address of the PC does not exist or the communication cable is disconnected.
When the above communication errors occur, the user sees an error report regarding the communication error, enabling the user to recognize the occurrence of the communication error.
However, the above communication apparatuses print an error report even if the user recognizes the occurrence of a communication error, irritating the user and paper and toner is wastefully used for printing the error report.
Particularly, as for the communication functions such as e-mail transmission function and PC transmission function in which the occurrence of a communication error is relatively quickly detected, the user often recognizes the communication error and, in which case, the error reports are excessively wasteful.
In order to resolve the above problem, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2002-232625 discloses a communication apparatus having a display part displaying error messages and a printer printing image information. The communication apparatus further comprises an error identification means identifying the nature of an error when an error occurs, an error information storage means storing the error identification result, and an error information output means selecting and outputting only the specified error nature information among the information stored in the error information storage means. With this arrangement, the user is efficiently made aware only of error information in which the user has an interest. The user is not irritated and output of wasteful error reports is prevented.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2006-333265 discloses a communication apparatus comprising a communication means communicating with other devices, an error detection means detecting the occurrence of a communication error in the communication, and an acknowledgment detection means detecting the user acknowledgement of the occurrence of the communication error. The communication apparatus further comprises a print time storage means storing the print time for printing an error report and a print means printing an error report on the communication having a communication error when the acknowledgment is not detected within the print time since the communication error is detected. With this arrangement, when the user has acknowledged the communication error occurrence, no error report is printed, preventing, as in the above case, irritation to the user and the output of wasteful error reports.